Sherlock's Heart
by PixieKindOfCrazy
Summary: John Watson never believed the rumours surrounding the detective's death and fraud and he never believed his friend's 'suicide' was a result of any of that. Rated T for swearing and post Reichenach feels.


**A/n: **_Ok I just had to do this. I don't care if I'm supposed to be working on my multi-chapter beta piece. If I don't write this, I'm gonna explode from all the Johnlock feelings! I recently started watching BBC's Sherlock. I finished the series in two days. I just watched the season two finale and for the Sherlockians that have seen it, you know what I'm going through. Excuse me while I cry in a corner. I legit just stopped writing for a second to cry into my hand. DAMN YOU MOFFATT! MARTIN FREEMAN WINS ALL THE AWARDS IN MY BOOK!__So yes…this was written…to vent my emotions…because I don't want to explode into tiny pieces of Katie-brain._

**Disclaimer: **_If I owned Sherlock, I wouldn't make the whole fandom wait until 2013 before John is happy again. I also would add in a slap whenever Sherlock reveals that he's not dead to John and Mrs. Hudson. HE MUST BE SLAPPED FOR THE EMOTIONAL DAMAGE HE CAUSED, AND THEN HUGGED REAPEATEDLY FOR SAVING THEIR LIVES! (Wow, longest disclaimer ever.) Oh well, in Martin's words 'Fuck you. I won a BAFTA!'_

"_My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher, yet he elects to be a detective. What might we deduce about his heart?" _

He stared at the bland wall paper behind her, the therapist was staring at him intently, trying to figure some way to make him talk.

_Sherlock would be repulsed by that wall-paper,_ he thought bitterly, anything to distract himself. Naturally, it only served to drive his thoughts further into the place he was trying to stay away from.

"John," she started, trying to make her voice soothing, he'd noticed-he really had spent too much time around _him_, "John, I'm only trying to help. You have to face this."

"What is it you want me to do, Doctor?"

The good doctor was losing her patience quickly; they'd been at this for months, "I want you to tell me what happened. What _really _happened."

He reluctantly tipped his head up, letting his eyes just meet the doctor's; she had warm green eyes, Sherlock would've been proud of him for noticing, "He…Sherlock…I believe he saved my life."

Her eyebrows shot up, surprise in her eyes; her patient had never revealed anything on the matter past what she'd already known. He'd just kept muttering 'he's dead' and 'bastard'. This was a new development. The sentiment is most likely very hard for the man to share with her; he'd always been a man to play close to the vest, so to speak.

"What makes you say that, John?"

John steeled himself against the onslaught that talking about this particular subject always brought on, it was like a part of his soul was dying and he was helpless to fix it. That's probably what irritates him the most; he'd always been the one to 'fix things', even as a kid, and after he met Sherlock, 'fixing' the situation became 'cleaning up after Sherlock', but he couldn't now. There was nothing he could do.

"I say it because it's the truth, what other point would there be in speaking?"

He knew he was snapping at her, 'deflecting and projecting' she would say, but he needed to vent it.

She simply nodded, "Sorry, let me rephrase: How did Sh-he save you?"

John shook his head, a desperate laugh escaping his lips, "In a lot of ways. And in equally as many ways, he ruined me. Before I met him, I was…I was going nowhere, just returned from the war and I couldn't…I couldn't see past it, couldn't integrate back into society."

The woman kept a firm, patient gaze on him, never faltering, only giving him a look to continue, "And that's where he came in?"

John swallowed back a strange pressure in his throat, nodding only once, "An old mate of mine mentioned that someone he knew was looking for a flatmate. I was staying in a hotel so I figured I might as well meet up with the guy, see if it was a good prospect, you know?" John paused his story, laughing, being taken back in time almost, to the moment he met his best friend and the man that would change his life, change the way he viewed the world, "Well, when I got there, Sherlock was looking at something under a microscope. My buddy introduced us and Sherlock…he actually ignored it, just looked at me for a second and asked if he could borrow my friend's phone."

The doctor's face pinched, confused, "But what…why is this story in your mind now? What happened that made you remember?"

"I remember this story because of what happened next-Sherlock told me a brief history of myself, deducing tiny impossible things from my phone and my tan and etc. I…I'd never been so impressed. I just sat in the cab next to that ridiculous man…and do you know what one of the sergeants told me when I left my first crime scene?"

The doctor shook her head.

"She told me that he gets off on that stuff, risk and puzzles, that one day we'd all be gathered around a dead body that Sherlock Holmes put there."

The doctor's eyes wandered down for the first time, the briefest second, because she'd heard rumors of what had happened to the great detective-how he faked his cases for the glory and invented his own arch enemy, "And…how does that make you feel, John?"

John's jaw clenched, "Stop. I see that look, in your eyes, you think he faked it all, you believe those rumors. Well, I'll tell you exactly why I'm telling this story, since you seem so keen to know. It's because every single damned _one _of those gossiping vultures spreading that story-they're _wrong. _Sherlock had the type of mind that could enable him to be anything he chose. He could've been a criminal, he could've been a doctor, he could've been a bum for Christ's sake, but he consciously _chose _to be a detective. Hell, he made up his own job title just so that he could do what he did. And do you actually _know _what he did? Because if you listen to those idiots out there, you'll never know the truth. The Sherlock they created in the papers is _not _the man I knew, and it's a bloody cowardly disrespect to his memory, because what he actually did, what he really did, was _help_. He saved people and tracked down justice and solved mysteries that no one else could. He could've done anything, but he _chose_ the good side. If he were here, he'd give you some bullshit about how he only did it for the thrill, for the mental workout, because he likes to fit the pieces together. But I know better; I always knew better. The reason I told you about the first time I met him was because it's the first time I noticed something about Sherlock-his brilliance is not driven by itself, there's a passion behind that genius; he didn't just solve crimes to entertain himself, I think he did it because it was the only way a man like him _could _help, without knowing he was doing it. I know that probably makes no sense to you and I realize I've talked more in this session than all our previous sessions combined, but I don't really care if you believe me."

John Watson stormed out of his therapist's office that day, slamming the door behind him and not looking anywhere but forward as he walked down the street. He shook his head to clear it; sometimes he thought he could still hear his friend's agitated baritone calling,'Watson!'

He knew the anger he felt right now, the rage, was not directed at the doctor, or even the journalists and civilians churning the rumour mill about his absent best friend. He knew the person he was mad at most was Sherlock himself.

Rationally, he knew it was illogical to be angry at the dead, but he couldn't help it. He had been bottling up all of his reaction to this mess for months and it physically wasn't possible to keep it in his head anymore. (He'd had more headaches in the past month than he'd had in his whole life, and his limp had come back stronger than ever.)

_I'm mad at him_, why was it so hard to admit to himself? He was mad at his dead best friend. It was insane, it was stupid, but it was true.

Sherlock had drastically changed his view of the world; in the comparatively short time John knew the man, he went from seeing the world as a huge mass that was forever turning with people walking beside him in the same position, to seeing the world as a constantly moving, fascinating puzzle, with brilliant people and exciting possibilities. He'd been in a state of nothingness before he met Sherlock; he went nowhere and did nothing. He wasn't living. But then he met him. And he owed him so much, to this day he still felt that he did.

But then had just decided to throw himself away, without even considering John. In a matter of minutes, John Watson's world went from being a huge, vibrant, buzzing place to shrinking into only that street corner. Only that place he had stood and listened, unknowingly, to Sherlock's suicide note, heard his him try to convince him and himself of the lies. Only that spot where he'd looked up and saw his best friend jump. In a split second, John's world fell, along with Sherlock. Everything he had shown him, taught him, given him with his company, it was all gone. He was right back where he had started. Except now it was worse, because before he couldn't miss something he had never had, but now he knew.

He knew what the world could be like and he knew that there was no one else he would ever meet that could ever be what Sherlock was.

_The man was a socipopath and a jackass, so maybe that's not a bad thing_, he thought bitterly to himself. But it was just the anger talking; he didn't truly believe it was better this way, not for a second.

Because, yes Sherlock had been an arrogant, condescending, cold bastard most of the time, but when he wasn't being that, he was the best man Watson had ever known. Not because he was smart, or clever, or wise, but because no matter how hard he tried to put off to everyone that he didn't care about or need anyone, he had died for his friends. There was a reason John had always put up with all his insults.

John was no fool, he knew why his friend had really jumped. It wasn't because he was afraid of the harassing he'd get for being a fraud, or even for the inevitable criminal charges he would receive. You see, John had a theory. He knew Sherlock had no plausible reason to be up on that roof unless someone had asked him to go up there; if Sherlock had truly wanted to kill himself, he was the type of person that would've done it in private, with a gun or something equally as clean. Sherlock's suicide, if it had really been a suicide, would have been an open and shut death, not some flashy public show. And the only man that had reason to ask Sherlock onto a roof- a public place, but also one where they were not likely to be disturbed,-was Moriarty himself.

All that John could figure from there was that something in their subsequent conversation on the roof had gone wrong. Officials say they found blood on that roof, far from the edge, but no body. So there must've been a struggle of some sort, or a confrontation. The last time he had heard Sherlock's voice, on that phone, he had sounded like a man being forced, like he didn't wish to do it. But he had still taken that step off the ledge…John continuously puzzled over why. He suspected that it was some deal where the end came down to this: Sherlock's life or the lives of people he cared about. Moriarty had always known how to manipulate Sherlock, probably the only one that truly could. And while Sherlock seemed to be indifferent to emotion, John knew better than most that if you harmed something Sherlock considered precious, or some_one, _he would've _found_ you and you would've paid for it. So John knew exactly how Sherlock would react in a situation where there was only one way to protect those precious few-he would take that one way, whether it meant death for him or not.

Because if there was only one thing about Sherlock that John perfectly understood, it was his heart; Sherlock's heart wasn't used as often or the same way as everyone else's, so when he does keep someone close to him, there is nothing that man wouldn't do for them.

**A/n: **_Please tell me if anything was out of character or inaccurate. And I just realized that at some points this looks like a romantic Johnlock shipping piece…and it's not, not in that way, I just think they're brothers, but if you want to interpret it like that, that you certainly can. _


End file.
